Meta Tags Guide

Learn how to use meta tags to optimize your site's visibility on search engines and social media.

Basic Meta Tags

The essential meta tags for every web page.

Title

The page title, displayed in browser tabs and search results. Ideal length: 50-60 characters.

<title>Your Title | Site Name</title>

Description

A brief description of the page for search engines. Ideal length: 150-160 characters.

<meta name="description" content="Your description here...">

Canonical

Indicates the canonical URL of the page to avoid duplicate content issues.

<link rel="canonical" href="https://yoursite.com/page">

Robots

Controls how search engines index the page.

<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">

Open Graph

Used by Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks to display rich previews.

Supported Platforms:

Facebook LinkedIn Pinterest Slack Discord WhatsApp
<!-- Open Graph Tags -->
<meta property="og:type" content="website">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://yoursite.com/page">
<meta property="og:title" content="Your Title">
<meta property="og:description" content="Your description...">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://yoursite.com/image.jpg">
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Site Name">
<meta property="og:locale" content="en_US">

Recommended Image Size

1200 x 630 pixels - This size works well on Facebook, LinkedIn, and most platforms. Format: JPG or PNG, max 8MB.

Twitter Cards

Allow you to create custom previews for X (Twitter).

Card Types

summary

Small card with square image

summary_large_image

Large card with rectangular image (recommended)

<!-- Twitter Card Tags -->
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">
<meta name="twitter:url" content="https://yoursite.com/page">
<meta name="twitter:title" content="Your Title">
<meta name="twitter:description" content="Your description...">
<meta name="twitter:image" content="https://yoursite.com/image.jpg">
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@youraccount">
<meta name="twitter:creator" content="@author">

LLM Meta Tags

New standards for communicating with AI crawlers and Large Language Models.

llms.txt

A new standard for providing contextual information to LLMs. The file should be placed in the site root.

# llms.txt - Information for LLMs
# Place at: https://yoursite.com/llms.txt

# Site name
name: My Website

# Short description
description: A website dedicated to...

# Useful links
docs: https://yoursite.com/documentation
api: https://yoursite.com/api

# Instructions for LLMs
instructions: |
  This site provides information about...
  Content is updated as of...
  For technical questions, refer to the documentation.

Robots.txt for AI Crawlers

You can control AI crawler access through the robots.txt file.

# Block GPTBot (OpenAI)
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

# Block Claude (Anthropic)
User-agent: anthropic-ai
Disallow: /

# Block Google Extended (Bard/Gemini training)
User-agent: Google-Extended
Disallow: /

# Block CCBot (Common Crawl for AI)
User-agent: CCBot
Disallow: /

AI Meta Tags

Some emerging meta tags for communicating with AI crawlers.

<!-- Block all AI bots from indexing the page -->
<meta name="robots" content="noai, noimageai">

<!-- Block specific AI bots -->
<meta name="GPTBot" content="noindex">
<meta name="anthropic-ai" content="noindex">

Best Practices

Use unique titles for each page

Every page should have a descriptive and unique title.

Keep descriptions concise

150-160 characters is the ideal length for descriptions.

Use high-quality images

1200x630px for Open Graph, ensure the image is publicly accessible.

Always test your pages

Use this tool to verify how your links will appear on social media.

Use absolute URLs for images

Images must have complete URLs (https://...) not relative paths.